In regard to the amazing elections last week that chose the first African American U.S. president, I want to call attention to some matters I haven’t seen mentioned elsewhere.
First, the election pointed out a fascinating difference between Israel’s population and the American Jewish community.
U.S. Jewry overwhelmingly favored Democratic Party nominee and now President-elect Barack Obama, giving him some 78 percent of the community’s vote.
Despite efforts by Jewish Republicans, the majority of the community doesn’t appear to want to shift from the loyalty to the Democrats it has maintained since at least the 1930s.
In contrast, a poll described by Israel’s Yediot Achronot newspaper on Oct. 27 found that most Israelis would rather have seen Republican nominee John McCain win.
Some 46 percent favored him to 34 percent for Obama, with the remainder undecided. (See the newspaper’s English-language Web site ynetnews.com.)
What accounts for this striking difference? Because I am interested in cultural anthropology, I wonder if at least part of it has to do with differences in the two cultures.
And one key difference I think is the cultures’ different roles and regard for the military. Israelis have lived literally in enemy gun-sights since the country’s founding in 1948. Therefore, most of its population has served in its military and has a high regard for the military and its leaders.
The United States, however, has a cultural tradition of mistrust of the military going back to its founding. (That is one big reason the Second Amendment right-to-bear-arms exists in the U.S. Constitution.) That mistrust has become even more pronounced in the political left, which has opposed most U.S. military actions since World War II from Vietnam in the 1960s to Iraq now — and the left is where most U.S. Jews politically live.
But beyond the left, the U.S. public largely does not feel itself to be under a direct threat that requires military defense, the events of 9/11/01 notwithstanding. Israel’s public does. Therefore, most Israelis may well prefer a military man like former U.S. Navy combat pilot and POW McCain to someone who has never done any military service.
I find this possibility fascinating from an anthropological view, but a bit troubling from a Jewish community member’s view. Some Jews on the political right and in Israel unfairly demonized Obama in the campaign as soft on support of Israel and on U.S. defense; and their vehemence may constitute evidence that this difference in world-views may be a deep-seated source of conflict and misunderstanding.
“Culture war”
I see a second troubling but fascinating piece of anthropology in the approvals of referenda in Arizona, Florida and California that defined marriage as man-and-woman and exclude homosexual couples.
Not being gay myself, I do not feel I have a personal stake in this issue. Still, I wish such referenda in those states and the one in Wisconsin in 2006 had not passed. I have yet to read any convincingly logical demonstration, or about any authentic evidence, that including homosexual couples in our culture’s definition of marriage undermines the marriages of any heterosexual couples or threatens marriage and the family as institutions.
Moreover, I’ve learned from cultural anthropology that “marriage” is a human-created institution that can be whatever any culture’s people want or need it to be.
Anthropological literature describes an amazing variety of ways that “marriage” can be or has been defined and practiced — including between two males or two females, on a permanent or a temporary basis. (See “Culture, People, Nature: An Introduction to General Anthropology” by Marvin Harris for descriptions.)
However, all the forms of marriage I have read about appear to have evolved unconsciously with the steps and reasons lost to the historical record. As far as I can tell, our culture is the only one that has ever gone through the exercise of defining marriage by vote.
I do believe in democracy but not that the majority in democratic societies is always right. Nevertheless, it’s clear that when majorities in state after state vote to approve these kinds of referenda, they say something about how our culture at least at present wants to define marriage.
Harris’ book “America Now: The Anthropology of a Changing Culture” presents a fascinating and sensible theory about why we are having a “culture war” over family structure, sexuality and other matters. Unfortunately, this theory is also too complex to summarize here.
Harris does, however, talk about the “procreative imperative” – a culture’s belief and teaching that sexual activity ought to be about making and raising children in a family and anything else ought to be discouraged.
I think this principle is one of Judaism’s legacies to Western civilization – “Be fruitful and multiply” in Genesis 1:28 – and its influence remains powerful.
Our culture may have changed to the point that it doesn’t punish homosexuals with imprisonment, mutilation or death as it once did and as some other cultures still do.
But I wonder if the message of these referenda is that our culture still wants heterosexuality to be considered the encouraged norm and homosexuality a discouraged exception.
And I wonder if this country will elect a woman and a Jewish and maybe even an atheist president before our culture shifts from that position.
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